


Loving Kyouko

by TaraSamadhi



Series: What Sayaka Left Behind [3]
Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Erotica, Eventual Romance, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Homoeroticism, Romantic Soulmates, Self-Reflection, Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 13:57:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18661777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraSamadhi/pseuds/TaraSamadhi
Summary: Even dwelling in the realm of the Law of Cycles, one can yearn, and Miki Sayaka is yearning. The more she remembers and makes sense of the past and the vast span of the present, the more she falls in love with Sakura Kyouko.Sayaka accepts the fact that she may have lost her chance to love Kyouko as she knows she should have done, but she lets herself love and hope for some way the two of them can meet and Sayaka can confess her love and accept Kyouko's love for her.This story is a bridge between the end of the series and Sayaka's confession to Kyouko in *Rebellion*.





	Loving Kyouko

“I thought I had no regrets when I died. But I came back here because I do have one. I left you behind.”

\- Sayaka to Kyouko, Rebellion

*

In the space of the goddess Madoka’s spirit called the Law of Cycles, Miki Sayaka found a universe in which she could move freely. Madoka’s love and kindness had no end. And this realm of Madoka’s radiance was where Sayaka, looking back on her life as a girl on Earth, dwelled now. 

But as happy as Sayaka was to imagine that departing the material realm released her from earthly love and pain, she quickly learned that it did no such thing. For the whole point of Madoka’s spiritual direction was to embrace and redeem that which emerged from pain and uncertainty. The Law of Cycles brought hurt into relief against hope and gave it a chance to dissolve in light. So it was natural that something bore down on Sayaka's heart more and more, something familiar that she did not want to revisit because she had never left it.

After leaving the earthly realm, after having watched over magical girls through the lens of the Law of Cycles, Sayaka had come to love Sakura Kyouko.

Kyouko had snuck into Sayaka’s heart so many times, during so many timelines, but Sayaka had been blind to this. Sayaka had not been there to witness some of the times Kyouko died for her, died with her, fought to keep her alive. In each timeline they occupied together in the wake of Madoka's power, Kyouko’s love wound them more and more tightly together. Horribly, though, each emergence of this love brought the curse of forgetfulness. Sayaka could barely comprehend her past lack of awareness about Kyouko’s love. Each tsunami of suffering leading her to damnation, in each timeline, in each lifetime, carried her further from the person who cared for her the most.

The strangest thing brought her spirit to kiss Kyouko’s across unbridgeable distance. She could only call it gratitude. Sayaka, in her time on Earth, would have laughed at this. How could gratitude give birth to love? Admiration, happiness, good will, and loyalty perhaps, but not love. Yet this is what happened. First, there were terrible moments when she wanted to turn to Kyouko, who was not there, and kiss her like a supplicant. Then, there were those moments when she wanted to tally up all the times Kyouko revealed love for her and put those in a book made of love that she could give Kyouko immediately, with no distance to bridge. She remembered a strange episode, after the time Kyouko died for her, when she met Kyouko in some between-state and took her hand with thanks and enraptured gratitude.

Kyouko had always been the one who loved her the most, for the mere weeks they had together in each lifetime they shared. The earthly Madoka loved her, but had no idea what love was. Sayaka’s family tried to love her, but no one in the family really knew how to love at all. They gave her kindness and encouragement in place of love, but there is a difference, and she felt it. Her endless longing to be loved ran over her like a train in every lifetime, deflecting her from the reality of romantic blind alleys like Kyosuke. In each timeline, when she found out about the soul gem’s nature she collapsed in self-loathing because she thought herself unworthy of someone’s love. But Kyouko loved her or was beginning to love her every time, and Sayaka had never heard Kyouko’s voice telling her so. What a waste. What a sorrow.

Kyouko's love might have been easier to rationalize away, if she had not truly treasured Sayaka. Every turn of the wheel, Kyouko had started out with that desperate, even cruel cynicism she used as a buffer against the world and reached out to Sayaka in an attempt to accept the wisdom Sayaka was unknowingly offering the world. Kyouko loved Sayaka because her beloved enabled her to remember the world of love and trust, because whatever her flaws, Sayaka definitely loved and loved deeply. Because Kyouko let herself be changed through her acceptance of Sayaka, she loved and was grateful. But in none of those passages of time together had Sayaka accepted Kyouko’s wisdom and been grateful for it, allowed Kyouko to reach her and pull her back from the brink. To allow such salvation, Sayaka would have had to accept a wisdom all Kyouko’s own that needed to be heeded and honored. That denial is what hurt her, more and more.

But the thing that frightened Sayaka about her love for Kyouko was that it reminded her, in fact taught her for the first time, about the gates of the flesh, the way the flesh beckoned as a place for love to happen in a joy supreme and terrifying. Sayaka remembered craving Kyosuke’s flesh, both of them scarcely past childhood, wanting him to take her to him and help her blossom from the core. She was ready to let him in, but he did not want it.

While learning to love Kyouko, Sayaka allowed herself, over time, to peer through the gates of Kyouko’s flesh to see what had awaited her if she had chosen to enter. Kyouko was strong, sinewy, less smooth than taut, exuding a constant lingering tang of sweat, gamy and wild. Looking through her gates into the embracing place was something that Sayaka, even safe in the Law of Cycles, was afraid to do. She was afraid of the rawness, the finality, the dark strength of that world. But when she finally allowed herself to see it, and allowed herself to imagine their bodies fused into a single current as their souls already were, she doubled over from regret at not having tasted the flavors of Kyouko’s flesh, traced Kyouko’s inner and outer contours with her fingers and mouth, heard Kyouko’s whispers and moans and cries and murmurs. She had passed on the chance to drink the waters of Kyouko's love.

Sayaka knew there might be a way to meet Kyouko again, to let her know that she loved her. Madoka said it was possible, although she did not say how. Going back to the material realm of the living was not possible, and in the countless other strange places between worlds, there might be at least one where Sayaka could approach Kyouko where she stood smiling and embrace her, whispering to her that she was now Kyouko's forever.

It’s like when I left the material world I took a train from a station to where I am, Sayaka thought. Even if I took a train back, that station would not be there. 

Maybe it’s possible to take the train and arrive at a different station, but still arrive at the same place.

What she wanted, wanted with her entire being, wanted with an agony of yearning that felt like joy, was to stand beside Kyouko in an enchantment of forever, love binding them tightly, their hands clasped together, fingers interlaced.


End file.
